America loves dogs. In a country with more than 300 million people, there are 77-plus million owned dogs. Well over a third of all households in America have a pet dog, with many having two or more.
Sometimes that love goes to extremes, as in Anne Arundel County where Animal Control officers found 51 dogs in a Pasadena home.
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Thursday’s near-full moon shines below the bright star Regulus, the heart of Leo the lion. This star, 77 light years away, has four times the girth, burns more than twice as hot and is more than 100 times brighter than our sun.
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Thursday as the sun sets around 6:10, the waxing moon glows high in the west. Look just a few degrees below this smiling crescent for glimmers from the Pleiades star cluster. With clear dark skies you might see six of these distant lights, but with the moon’s glow you’ll have an easier time with binoculars, which should reveal far more stars....

By week’s end, the moon is lost amid the glare of the sun, with new moon at 3:46 Friday afternoon. While you might say that the moon has disappeared behind the sun, it has in truth disappeared in front of the sun. As our natural satellite, the moon’s orbit around earth never carries it opposite the sun. Rather, the new moon is there before our eyes, as close as ever....

By the time the sun sets around 5:55, Jupiter shines through the fading twilight low in the west. There should be no mistaking Jove’s brilliant glow, but the darker the sky grows, the closer to the horizon he settles, finally disappearing around 8pm.
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February’s full moon straddles Thursday and Friday, appearing equally large both nights. The actual moment of totality is at 4:36am Friday, when the moon is opposite the sun with earth smack-dab between the two.
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Thursday’s first-quarter moon appears almost directly overhead with sunset around 5:35. By the time the sky has become truly dark an hour later, the moon has pivoted westward and the red star Aldebaran, of Taurus, has taken its earlier place.

Some of the sky’s brightest sites travel this road through the heavens

The waning gibbous moon rises around 7:45pm Friday, January 21. Look a half-dozen degrees above it for the blue-white star Regulus, the heart of Leo the lion. Just as the lion is the king of beasts, Leo is the king of the constellations. In Latin, regulus means little king....